Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index

Image of the Month

September 2019 [Posted November 2019]

Title: Pitcairn Flight into Egypt
Creator:
Description:
In this brilliantly colored stained glass panel, Mary and the infant Jesus ride a donkey led by Joseph. They are fleeing to Egypt because an angel has warned Joseph of danger. King Herod's men have been ordered to kill all male babies in the region of Bethlehem because of a prophecy concerning the Messiah's birth. In the panel attention is focused on the fig Mary is plucking from a branch which hangs down in front of her. This incident is recounted in a twelfth-century version of the apocryphal "Infancy Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew" in which Mary asks Joseph for a piece of fruit because she is thirsty. He replies that rather than climb the high tree he should be walking to get water. The infant Christ then commands "Bend down your branches, O tree, and refresh my mother with your fruit." In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, this story attaches itself to the nativity and changes to explicitly address Joseph's resentment as a cuckolded husband. In the N-Town play of "The Nativity" he says
Your desire to fulfil I shall attempt surely
Oh, to pluck you these cherries is a work wild
For the tree is so high it will not be easy,
Therefore let him pluck the cherries who got you with child!

This stained glass panel is part of an important collection of medieval art at the Glencairn Museum in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania outside Philadelphia. Scholars believed that it was a modern-day forgery until art historian Michael Cothren in 1977 closely examined the quality of the glass and details of the painted faces. Subsequent research and published studies proved that the panel was largely made up of twelfth-century glass and came from the workshop at Saint-Denis, the abbey church associated with the kings of France. The panel was part of the Infancy Window which represented the Annunciation, Nativity, Flight into Egypt, and Arrival in Sotine.

This window was part of the art and architecture program designed by Abbot Suger, the dynamic and influential leader of the Saint-Denis monastery (1122-1151). He was an advisor to generations of French kings and served as regent for Louis VII when he went on the Second Crusade. In renovating the abbey church, Suger heightened the walls, adding large windows that let in an abundance of light and conveyed important themes in brilliant colors. In his text, The Book of the Consecration of the Church of Saint-Denis, Suger wrote: Then, the size of the old side aisles, likewise, had to conform
to the dimensions of the new ones, except in that elegant and
superb addition with its circuit of oratories that allowed the
entire church to radiate with magnificent, uninterrupted
light pouring through the sacred stained-glass windows that
illuminated its interior beauty. This elegant atmosphere was further enhanced by tapestries, gold work and jeweled reliquaries and liturgical vessels. Suger's innovations led to the development of the Gothic style that transformed churches all across Europe.
Source: Glencairn Museum
Rights: Reproduced here with the permission of the Glencairn Museum.
Subject (See Also): Apocryphal Literature Egypt Jesus Christ- Infancy Joseph, Saint Mary, Virgin, Saint
Geographic Area: France
Century: 12
Date: circa 1145
Related Work: Detail of the Virgin and child, Pitcairn Flight into Egypt, Glencairn Museum.
Infancy window, Saint-Denis Abbey, circa 1145 with nineteenth century restorations.
Saint-Denis Basilica website from the Centre des Monuments Nationaux.
"The Flight into Egypt -- The Holy Refugees, The 'Simple' Images (Part I of a Series)" This blog by Margaret Duffy features images from the early Middle Ages through the nineteenth century. See also Part 2 The Flight into Egypt – The Variations. Related to this is the three-part series, The Rest on the Flight into Egypt.
Current Location: Bryn Athyn, PA, Glencairn Museum, 03.SG.114
Original Location: Saint-Denis, France, Abbey of Saint-Denis, Infancy of Christ Window
Artistic Type (Category): Digital images; Stained glass windows;
Artistic Type (Material/Technique): Pot metal glass; Vitreous paint
Donor:
Height/Width/Length(cm): 52/50/
Inscription:
Related Resources: Cothren, Michael W. "The Infancy of Christ Window from the Abbey of St.-Denis: A Reconsideration of Its Design and Iconography." Art Bulletin 68 (1986): 398-420;
Cothren, Michael W. "Joseph's Dream in the Thomson Collection: Reconsidering the Reconstruction of the Infancy of Christ Window from Suger's Saint-Denis." Arts of the Medieval Cathedrals: Studies on Architecture, Stained Glass and Sculpture in Honor of Anne Prache. Edited by Kathleen Nolan and Dany Sandron. Ashgate, 2015. Pages 107-119;
Cothren, Michael W. "The Pitcairn Flight into Egypt." Glencairn Museum News 1 (2016). Available open access: https://glencairnmuseum.org/newsletter/2016/1/18/the-pitcairn-flight-into-egypt?rq=The%20Pitcairn%20Flight%20into%20Egypt;
"Extracts from the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew." New Testament Apocrypha Volume One. Edited by Wilhelm Schneemelcher. Westminster John Knox Press, 1990. Pages 462-465;
The N-Town Plays. A Modernization by Stanley J. Kahrl and Alexandra F. Johnston. 1999. Published on the University of Toronto Computing in the Humanities and the Social Sciences website: http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~ajohnsto/frntmt.html;
Rudolph, Conrad. "Inventing the Exegetical Stained-Glass Window: Suger, Hugh, and a New Elite Art." Art Bulletin 93, 4 (2011): 399-422;
Stained Glass before 1700 in American Collections: Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern Seaboard States (Corpus Vitrearum Checklist II). National Gallery of Art, 1987. Available for download: http://corpusvitrearum.us/checklists-usa/;
Suger, Abbot of Saint Denis. Selected Works of Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis. Translated by Richard Cusimano and Eric Whitmore. Catholic University of America Press, 2018.

The Feminae database presents images of medieval art with descriptions, data, and subject indexing. Each thumbnail picture has a link to a higher quality image often with a zoom view and added content from a museum. Images included represent women and gender 450 to 1500 C.E. in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Beginning in June 2012 we have highlighted each month a newly added image that is rich in documentary evidence or iconographic significance.

As images build up in the database, users can browse for aggregated evidence. The Donor field groups people together in the categories layman/men, laywoman/women, female religious and male religious. The Current Location field allows users to see artwork that is all housed in the same museum. Image records are integrated with all the other Feminae content, so that a search on Mary Magdalen will include results for essays, journal articles, translations, book reviews, and images (which come at the end of the list which is sorted by date). Feminae Research Assistants

Feminae Research Assistants:

Jonathan Sudo worked on Feminae in summer 2019. He is majoring in History and East Asian Studies at Haverford College.

Drew Forte began working on images in Spring 2018. He has a particular interest in the occult and magic as represented in medieval art.

Jessica Urban researched and wrote about images from fall 2016 through fall 2017. She concentrated on archaeology and material culture. She majored in Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College.

Bill Ristow is working on manuscript images during the 2015-16 academic year. He is majoring in history and writing his senior thesis on medieval kingship with reference to Wace's Roman de Rou and Henry II.

Rachel Davies worked on the brass rubbings during the 2013 summer session for the exhibit Lasting Impressions. During 2015-16 she is concentrating on entries concerning Spanish art.

Leigh Peterson worked on images during the Fall 2012 through Spring 2015 academic years. She was an undergraduate student who majored in art history at Bryn Mawr College. She was an intern at the Cloisters Museum during summer 2013.

Shannon Steiner added images during the summer and fall of 2013. Shannon is a doctoral student in History of Art at Bryn Mawr College. She holds a B.A. from Temple University (2009) and M.A.s from The University of Texas at Austin (2011) and Bryn Mawr College (2013). Her research focuses on the visual culture of saints' cults and the role of art in forming community and gender identities in Byzantium.

Sarah Celentano worked on the initial 300 image records. She is a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on the visual culture of female monastic communities with a specialization in twelfth-century German-speaking areas. Her dissertation, "Embodied Reading as Political Action in the Hortus deliciarum," will explore the textual and visual responses in the twelfth-century Hortus deliciarum to papal schism and imperial challenges to Church authority. Additional areas of examination will be the use of medieval mnemonic techniques, and conduits of artistic exchange between northern and southern Europe.